Dum Dum Girls – Only In Dreams

On their second outing, Los Angeles’ Dum Dum Girls absorb themselves with a clutch of more mature concerns than evidenced by their no-frills debut I Will Be. A photo of singer Dee Dee’s now deceased mother appears on the cover, and a clutch of the songs at the heart of the record are mined from the frontwoman’s feelings of tour-induced separation from cherished loved ones.

Musically, though, there is only a little deviation from the back-to-basics garage indie of their first LP, but this time without such rough hewn pop gems as Bhang Bhang, I’m A Burnout and  Oh Mein Me to hook in listeners. It’s far from a disaster; Always Looking has an echo of the psychedelic, girl-group strut of their best work, and there’s more than a little bit of Chrissie Hynde on the country-ish strum of Heartbeat, but you can’t shake the feeling that Dum Dum Girls are a band much in need of a new, unifying idea.